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From Chuck Lorre, the man who unleashed Dharma and Greg and Two and a Half Men on the world, comes The Big Bang Theory, CBS' latest attempt to keep the multi-camera sitcom format alive.

The show stars Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) and Jim Parsons as Leonard and Sheldon, roommates who, as you may guess from their names, are quite nerdy. The beautiful Penny (Kaley Cuoco, all grown up from 8 Simple Rules) moves into the apartment across the hall, and the nerds invite her over for some lunch. Defying the odds, she turns out to be a nice hottie and strikes up a friendship with the nerds. Think Beauty and the Geek: The Sitcom.

If two nerds aren't enough for you, Leonard and Sheldon are friends with two even bigger nerds, namely Rajesh (Kunal Nayyar) and Howard (Simon Helberg). It's unclear whether there exist enough nerd jokes to sustain the show for the long-term. However, to the show's credit, the pilot episode includes several clever quips that may make the geeks watching at home squeal with delight. One involves the two leads planning to watch a marathon of Battlestar Galactica season 2 on DVD…with audio commentaries!

With single-camera comedies like The Office or Scrubstaking over, it's hard to judge an old-fashioned sitcom, as even casual TV viewers are familiar and bored with the formula. You can see the set-ups and punchlines coming, and there's very little original ground to cover here. Still, when compared to similar shows like Two and a Half Men or According to Jim, The Big Bang Theory is a lot like its lead characters – lovable, off-beat and entirely unthreatening.

The Big Bang Theory is a nice transitional show for CBS Mondays at 8:30pm. Before it comes How I Met Your Mother, the funniest multi-camera show on TV and a true underrated gem. After it is Two and a Half Men, the highest-rated comedy on TV, despite the fact the critics routinely pan it as mediocre at best and unwatchable at worst. The Big Bang Theory lies somewhere in between.

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